


A Meeting With Grantaire

by MerryDew (Honey_Dew_Mellon)



Series: Musicals; A Star Wars AU [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alien!Floreal, Alien!Grantaire, Drinking, Gen, Grantaire's friends are protective, Past OC death, Past Violence, Protective Floreal, Protective Grantaire, Resistance Operative Brian Denton, Yes he has a tag now, so is he
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 12:31:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11851620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honey_Dew_Mellon/pseuds/MerryDew
Summary: In Which Grantaire makes a deal to, hopefully, save his friends with someone he knew from a long time ago. Some world building in my Musical Star Wars Verse and some history with Grantaire. Prior knowledge of Star Wars not required.





	A Meeting With Grantaire

Grantaire sat anxiously at the bar. He had asked to have this meeting in the Musain because he’d thought that he would be more comfortable here and because even if he wasn’t comfortable then he could drink until he was. Neither part of that plan was working for him, he could feel his buzz and yet his knee was still jumping under the bar. He wished that he didn’t see what was coming and that he hadn’t let himself care enough to actually try to stop it.

The only reason that he was even friends with Les Amis was because the same bar where he knew the waitresses well enough that he could get free drinks was the one that was willing to let them host meetings. In hindsight he should have picked another bar, free drinks be damned, when he heard what they were talking about. Instead he had stayed to drink and ridicule their leader which had somehow lead to them becoming friends. That odd friendship was the only reason that he was here waiting for his old resistance contact.

It had not been five years ago yet that he had also been such an idealistic fool as to believe that the people could just rise up and change things. Surely not long enough for Les Amis, men and women of about his own age, to have forgotten the way that the bodies had been strewn about the street and how many people had died in that week of pitched combat. Those deaths had included all of Grantaire’s friends, the people to whom he had spoken to and listened to on the subject of rising against the current imperial government.

All signs of that combat had been wiped from the planet and the surrounding area, only in some of the shadiest corners could one find the scorch marks of old blaster fire. Sometimes Grantaire found himself down there just staring at those marks and wondering who had died there. No one spoke of that event, it was almost like it had never happened. Since Zoater was a university planet home to several upscale campuses the story had been buried and the governor kept a very close eye on any potentially dangerous groups. He had already seen a man at the Musain who had to be operative sent to observe Les Amis.

That operative was why he was here. Les Amis were starting to become something more than a place where rich students went to talk about problems. Enjolras and the others where all raring to do something more than just the usual student protests and he had seen where what they wanted to do would lead. He couldn’t stop them, disparagement would only serve to make them more impassioned and they started to make stronger arguments. What he could do was create a safety net, he had been in charge of doing this before and circumstances had combined to ruin it. Hopefully he would be able to make this one different and spare a few lives.

He was staring into the bottom of the glass and wondering if he should order another drink, wondering if Floreal – the Twi’lek bartender- would serve him another, when Brian walked in. He didn’t turn to watch the operative cross the room, he could see the other man clearly in the tiles across the back wall of the bar. Brian didn’t look all that different, his blond hair had darkened a touch and there where certainly more lines around his eyes but other than that he looked the same. Grantaire knew that he looked nothing like the naïve Zankrei that had contacted the man and it bothered him that the same years would have less of an effect, even if he knew that humans aged differently than Zankrei’s.

When Brian stepped up beside him he didn’t slide onto one of the barstools. Just as well, it would be best that this conversation took place in one of the booths. Musichetta, an Alder-Espirion and the owner of the bar, wasn’t paranoid about people eavesdropped on her customers but a few of her regulars where. It was Eponine who scanned the bar regularly for any bugs and had done so only last night at the end of her shift. The hope that their conversation would go without being overheard was another reason that he had picked The Musain as the meeting place.

“Could I get a refill Flo?” The pale gold Twi’lek gave him a nod. He may already be buzzed well before a time of day that it was socially acceptable, even on a university planet, but he was need at least one more drink in order to get through this. He could feel Brian’s disapproval without looking over his shoulder at the other man.

“What about your friend?” She posed the question as she leaned over the counter to refill his glass from a pitcher. He could tell from the way that her eyes only scanned briefly over Brian that she had some idea that the operative wasn’t just another perspective art collector nor a student who was going to hire him to write a test.

“I’ll have what he’s having.” The response came as a surprise to Grantaire. Brian had never struck him as the sort who would drink this early nor while he was someplace on business. Then again he didn’t really know anything about the man other than the fact that he was a resistance operative. He doubted that Brian was even the other man’s real name.

Once they both had their drinks he led the other man to a booth in the back, before he could take a seat the other man slipped into the side facing the door. Unlike the first time that they had done this he was actually able to recognize the strategy, sitting there gave Brian a full view of the bar and even more importantly it gave him a directly line of sight to the door. It also put him close to the back hallway, it was likely that before he had even agreed to meet here the human had looked over the official floor plan. That back hallway lead to an exit through the alley that ran behind the building, it was hardly wide enough for a speeder to pass through.

Brian only touched his glass to his lips long enough to taste the beer before putting it back down on the table and leaning in. “Why am I here Grantaire? You know how much of a risk that this is for both of us.” There was the man that he remembered. The human’s inflexion was akin to that of children of particularly wealthy imperial families. The exact sort of people who looked down at him because he wasn’t human and the sort of people who had done their best to prevent him from ever getting the art scholarship that had got him here. Still he had found a way to get past it before and he would find a way to do so again.

“There’s a student group that’s been riling things up again.”

“And you risked getting both of us killed just because they’re doing what students do every year?”

“No.” He kept his voice from getting louder through sheer force of will. “I called you in because they are doing what my friends did five years ago. I wasn’t the only person who survived. All the hiding places and many of the weapons are still here. I’ve only meet people from this one group but they have contacts all over the planet.” His voice grew quieter as he continued and leaned in, when his friends had been the ones doing this he had been doing Bahorel’s job and getting them in contact with anyone who could help which had included contacting the resistance. Some of those people that Les Amis where in contact with he recognized from five years ago even if they might not recognize him.

“So? All I can do is tell them the same thing that I told your friends before and if you can recall they didn’t listen to me back then.” Grantaire remembered the fight that Brian had had with Julian, the leader that his friends had elected from among themselves. It had ended with the operative removed from the meeting and not invited to return after he’d told them that if they wanted to succeed they would need to leave the planet and find a better base. “The people here may talk about supporting a revolution but you need more than just promises. In order for any resistance to succeed here you will need to prove that the system to replace the Empire will be able to run things with equal efficiency and that it will retain the economy here.”

“Then don’t tell them that.” He hadn’t used his only secure channel off planet to contact Brian just to repeat the past. If Julian had been too stubborn for his own good then Enjolras was doubly so, there was no way that he would listen to an outsider. “In fact I don’t need you to tell them anything. I just need to know who the resistance has in the city. I want them to approach Les Amis and give them a secure method of communication to be used only in the case of emergency. A form of S.O.S. so that if they ever do come to see the wisdom of getting off planet then they’ll be able to do so.”

In the final days of the fighting, when Julian had known that there was no way that the students and workers would be able to win, he asked him to find a way out for them. Since he was in charge of connecting with other resistance groups his friend had thought that he would have been the one to be able to get them off planet. He had tried and tried, the only reason that he hadn’t been killed in the same ambush as the rest of his close friends was because at the time he had been meeting a smuggler to see if there was any way to get passage out. If they’d had the sort of S.O.S that he was asking for now then his friends might have survived. They might have been able to do more than just survive, they could have done much more.

Brian stared at him for a moment, clearly searching his face for something but Grantaire couldn’t say what it was. He was exactly what he looked like, a cynical and particularly well marinated one at that. He couldn’t read the human well enough to tell if the man had found whatever he was looking for when he leaned back but he certainly wasn’t expecting the next words.

“No.” He stared, mind scrambling to come up with another argument that might convince the man. Before he could come up with something the human continued. “I’ll give you the S.O.S but you aren’t going to hand it over to… Les Amis. You’re going to keep it and if it needs to be used then you are going to be the one who does so. A few years ago I decided that I could trust your judgement…” the look he gave him implied that might have changed “and right now I’m deciding that I’m going to do that again. Grantaire you have good instincts providing you don’t manage to drown them, if you use them then you can save your friends this time.”

His only reaction to those words was to rock back in his seat. This had to be some kind of ridiculous joke. Brian thought that he had good instincts? The man was a recruiter, he had to be able to see though all the bantha fodder reasons that people claimed drove them to the resistance in order to get to the truth. He needed to be able to read people and understand them. Yet he seemed to be completely misreading him, he was a drunk and a street fighter which by all basic standards meant that he didn’t have good instincts. Actually by most people’s standards, certainly by those of most of the Les Amis, it meant that he had none whatsoever.

Still he thought that he could live with whatever lie about him that the human had decided to believe about him as the man reached into his pocket to pull out what seemed to be a completely ordinary coms link. Despite what he hoped was a deceptively innocent exterior he couldn’t help but be a little bit excited as it was slid across the table towards him. He couldn’t let his emotion affect his reaching for it so he covered his quick grab by lifting his glass back to his lips. Only when he had jammed it in his pocket did it occur to him that it was odd that the other man had just been carrying around something like this. He hadn’t mentioned his plan, just asked him to come.

Yet again Brian managed to anticipate the question before he could actually ask it. At this point he was starting to wonder if the other man was actually a force sensitive, even with years’ worth of training in reading the expressions of other people and other species it still didn’t seem likely that he would know this much and still be able to read Grantaire years after they first met. Especially since he had changed so much since then, both mentally and physically. In a Zankrei’s mid-twenties they started to develop markings, both lighter and darker than their original skin tone, across their entire body. The same markings tended to dramatically change the contours of their face. In as little as a year apart it could become near impossible to read the face of a childhood friend. As such it shouldn’t be possible for Brian to read him like he clearly was.

“Why else would you be calling me here unless the students wanted to rebel again? Besides you aren’t the only ex-resistance operative that we have on planet.” The human paused but it felt so calculated that it made him wonder. He had called on Brian because the first word that came to the mind when he thought about the other man was trustworthy. He had somehow failed to consider that the man was not only a recruiter but an operative, both positions being things that required other people to think that he was trustworthy. How much of Brian was just some act put on to further the goals of the resistance and how much was genuine? Was he putting his faith and the lives of his friend in the hands of someone that didn’t really exist? “I’ll have to put you in contact with them I suppose, just so that more open minded people don’t die on this planet.”

He thought that the man would just pull out a second coms link with the relevant contact information on it but instead Brian gestured for him to return the one that he had already given him. He was reluctant hand it back over, some small part of him didn’t trust that if he did hand it back then Brian would return it. Perhaps whatever had convinced the man to trust him before was gone and now that they were face to face the human had seen that. That didn’t seem to be likely, especially as the human seemed just to be programming something more into the device and then promptly put it back down on the center of the table. Still he hardly managed to stop himself from reaching out to snatch it and put it back in his pocket, barely remembering to disguise the motion but picking up his glass to take another gulp. This time, with anxiety pumping in his veins, he gulped down nearly half of the glass.

The look of disapproval that Brian shot him irritated him enough that he purposefully picked the glass back up and chugged down the rest of it while maintaining eye contact. It was a habit that he had picked up in Les Amis meetings whenever whoever was speaking told him to put whatever he was drinking down and pay attention. It had backfired on him a few times when it had resulted in him chugging a hot beverage that he had only been checking the temperature of or when he had been experimenting with mixed drinks and ended up chugging down only the most alcoholic of the ingredients. He realized only too late that even if there was no direct impact on his taste buds in this instance he probably ought not to have done that in front of the human. Unlike Les Amis meetings he was not here to make a bother of himself and try to talk people down from the point of doing something rash like starting an open rebellion.

Apparently his instinctual decision was enough to end the meeting because Brian slipped out of the booth and headed directly towards the front of the bar. Even if Grantaire wanted to ask any questions or thank him he didn’t have the chance as the man didn’t so much as look back over his shoulder. For a heartbeat he stared at the door even after he had watched the human walk out of his line of sight. He wished that he understood exactly what had just happened because he didn’t get the impression that this was simply him receiving an SOS signal and some potential local resistance handlers. Still the glass pane of the door didn’t give him an answers and with some reluctance he pushed himself to his feet.

He was about to head back to the bar, mind already scrambling for some kind of cover story that would seem believable to Floreal, when he reached out to snatch up the drink that Brian had abandoned after only a few sips. He chugged it down, it would be a shame to let good alcohol go to waste just because Brian had some rule about drinking on the job. Besides the slight heat on this throat gave him his answer, there was one thing that would make her so happy that she might not even think about asking him any more questions.

With the lie that he was going to tell fixed somewhat guiltily in mind he turned back to the bar with a smile and made his way over to toss himself onto one of the stools. Under the force it spun around and he only stopped himself on the third spin when he rested his elbows on the bar. The smile that he maintained was only partially faked, he was happy that this time he might have a way out for his friends yet it was still tempered by the fact that he might need it. He wished that he wouldn’t but he wasn’t that blind about the world.

“So what was that all about?” Floreal stopped fiddling with something below the bar and leaned forwards on her elbows, one gold headtail fell over her shoulder to rest on the bar. He could see the muscles in that one twitching with curiosity. “Are you using my bar to conduct business?” She drawled her words out longer than was needed to form the question. A curious accent and one that he swore he knew the origins of eve if he couldn’t recall the name of the planet or region.

“Just a university recruiter.” That perked her interest and she gestured for him to continue. “He said that he _might_ be willing to give me a new scholarship, apparently they liked some of my art from the last show.” It was too bad that he was lying, that was supposed to be the point of managing to get his paintings into as many small showings on the planet as he could. Shortly after the attempted uprising most universities had dramatically cut their arts funding thinking that it was in some way related and that it had inspired the students. That was why he’d lost his scholarship in the first place.

The fact that the funding had started to recover just now, when a separate student uprising was in the works likely wasn’t a good sign. Grantaire might be an art student but he could see that this was going to end in a false correlation that would devastate future funding. He’d done research into it when he had lost his scholarship due to some morbid curiosity and a lack of anything else that he could be doing. Oddly it was the scientists that had done the research that linked the funding with arts students being the cause of the uprising and then called the connection false. They’d been the ones to publish some hasty papers that listed the names and majors of all the student revolutionaries to show that the main body of the uprising had been law students and science majors. That had been ignored, largely because it seemed to be designed to make martyrs of the dead and distribute the names.

“Well that’s a good sign.” She poured him a drink without him asking and slide it over. “On the house. In celebration for you finally preparing to get your life back on track.” Her eyes darkened with thought for a moment and he braced himself to provide more details but that wasn’t what she asked about. “He gave you a comlink, was that a good sign?”

Sithspawn, of course she’d seen it. Floreal was an observant woman and she tended to look after him with a keen eye. He must give off the air of some helpless creature as people seemed to either think him harmless and thus in need of protection or harmless and thus an easy target. Neither was correct but it was impossible to convince his friends that he wasn’t the former when so many muggers took him as the latter. He could usually take the muggers, he boxed with Bahorel several times a week and actually beat him several times, but on the occasion that he was too drunk that was always when his friends would find out about it.

“I don’t know.” At least he remembered enough about when he had actually had had the interest of several universities that he could easily come up with a lie. “It’s just something that they give out to all perspective students. It has the contact information for a number of the student leaders and some professors. A map of the compass and some other similar stuff.”

It seemed to be enough to satisfy her as she nodded and went back to polishing glasses behind the bar without any further questions. That was a relief as when he had picked The Musain it had never occurred to him that she would be on shift. This was probably going to create a bigger problem than it initially presented, the lie that he had told her would get around to all his friends and he would have to suffer constant questions about his going back to university. That wasn’t something that they were like to let up on anytime soon, he’d have to come up with thousands of excuses. The next sip of his drink tasted bitter on his throat as he struggled to prepare a few and a few seconds later he chugged it down before gesturing for another.

**Author's Note:**

> Zankrei = Blue skinned humanoids, hair colour can be monochromatic (Black or White) with slight shading towards other colors (Think mostly white with a tint of blue/green/red or black with the same general idea).


End file.
